


refraction and recombination

by Lilith



Series: Yuletide [8]
Category: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Genre: A Closed and Common Orbit, Alien Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Experimentation, Friends to Lovers, Genderfluid Character, Impact Play, Nonverbal Communication, Other, Post-Canon, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilith/pseuds/Lilith
Summary: Tak takes Sidra to a different kind of party, Sidra dabbles in Aeluon color language, and her sensory analogues might be trying to tell her something.
Relationships: Sidra/Tak (Wayfarers Series)
Series: Yuletide [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1236365
Comments: 26
Kudos: 59
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	refraction and recombination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [halfeatenmoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/gifts).



**Received message  
Encryption: 2  
Translation: 0  
From: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)  
To: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)**

Hello! It’s a pleasant surprise to hear from you again. Thank you for sharing the workarounds you’ve used for managing the hardware’s limitations regarding memory storage and so on. Customization for individual needs is something I wholeheartedly encourage.

Unfortunately, this particular incompatibility probably isn’t something that can be resolved with your current unit. I don’t think a patch would solve the issue; I would need to redesign some of the component parts to prevent the interference you encountered from that particular application of nanobots. And while I might tinker around with that, it likely wouldn’t be an option for you, not unless you want to start over with an entirely new unit. If that’s the case, let me know, although it sounds as though the decorative function of the bots in question isn’t necessarily a priority.

Either way, thank you for alerting me to the issue, so I can consider addressing it in the future, or at least make a note in the manual.

Take care,  
Mr Crisp  
____________

“So we’re sticking with the static ink, then.”

Sidra lay on her stomach, comfortably draped over the _eelim_ at an acute angle to the floor of Tak’s shop. She gave a little sigh and shrugged.

“No bots for me. I suppose it’s just as well; I’ll be a little more Aeluon-friendly this way.” And it wasn’t as though she was anything but thoroughly pleased with Tak’s work so far, dynamic or not. She rolled her arm a bit towards her face, once again appreciating the ocean etched there, the newer ink covering and embellishing the marks where the original nanobots had been removed. She could pick out a few minute spots where those older lines were still just visible, but nobody who didn’t know to look for them would ever notice. Tak was very good at his craft.

If anything, the subtle layering she could perceive added meaning to her tattoo; it marked an important memory, a struggle towards who she had become. Not something she’d ever intended when she chose the design, but satisfying.

The artist in question chuckled. “I can’t speak for my species, but I certainly find you friendly enough,” he replied. A soft clicking noise told her that he was loading ink into his instrument. “Are you ready to begin?”

She was more than ready. The familiar buzzing sound started up, and the faint vibrations in her synthetic skin as the needle touched down on her shoulder blade. She gave a happy sigh, settling in as Tak began to work.

“Now that’s a response I don’t usually get when I start work on someone, no matter how tattoo-happy my customer is.” Sidra couldn’t see Tak’s face from her position, not without craning around and jarring his careful hand, but the talkbox conveyed a wry amusement. “At least, not until the endorphins start to hit, and that takes a little while for most species.”

“It’s just such a perfect design.” She suppressed a wriggle of joy at the thought of it. A stylized depiction of six animals, ranged around a simple representation of a vaguely human face, much like petals around the center of a flower. There they were: her cat, rabbit, dragon, turtle, spider and monkey. The symbolism would be clear to a very small number of sapients, and entirely opaque to any other viewer. It sent a little surge of warmth and delight through her pathways as she pulled up the image. She couldn’t wait to see what it looked like on her body - and though it would be out of sight to her primary visual processors, she would be able to look at it any time she liked, through one of her other sets. Which was fitting.

While she was thinking of this, with considerable satisfaction, she was also rifling through the files she’d moved from her memory banks into local storage a few hours ago - everything she had about tattoos from both medical and cultural perspectives. Because she didn’t experience anything truly analogous to physical pain, she hadn’t given more than passing consideration to the cascade of neurological and sensory responses that various species could experience as a result. Now, she lingered.

“It hadn’t occurred to me to regret the inability to feel pain,” which surprised her, now that she came to think of it. Of course she was aware of the symbolic import various species gave to the broader concept, from the Aandrisk association between the sharp tug and release of a feather and the recognition of interpersonal connection, to the value Humans attached to achievement through endurance. By base, however, pain was the organic version of her error messages and system alerts. A notification of damage or its potential, initiating a behavioral change or repair process. Her own programming did not provide her with a more pleasant ameliorating process to soothe over the warnings once they were activated.

Considering how incapacitating her alerts could be, she supposed she could see the benefit to something that might tamp them down, allowing her to better focus her processes on the resolution instead of being overwhelmed.

Tak’s steady hand didn’t pause when she expressed this, but his synthetic voice became more thoughtful (a wash of browns and tans, she thought, in reference to the basic translation file she was keeping tucked away in her background processes). “That’s certainly one way those chemicals work. I do wonder if it was a bit of a design flaw on your mystery tech’s part, not providing some kind of pain analogue. Your alert system doesn’t really align with it all that well from my perspective - you don’t see any warnings when I’m doing this, right?”

“No,” she conceded, “but my alerts aren’t designed with this kind of housing—with a body—in mind. My system doesn’t register this as a problem. There’s overlap between threats to your health and to mine, if you want to call it that, but a good deal of difference, too.”

She thought of her proximity alarms, which she was reluctant to remove completely, although she had tweaked them a little during one of her early forays into her own code. She needed to be able to cope better than she had, say, that first time she’d gone dancing, but at the same time, she simply wouldn’t be herself, without them.

“Sure,” Tak agreed readily. “I’m just thinking of basic social practicalities and camouflage. The first time we did this, I thought you were so stoic!”

She gave a rueful laugh. “I kept forgetting to wince.”

“That’s the kind of thing I mean, though! What if you accidentally bumped into something sharp and didn’t realize that you were bleeding your fake blood all over the place? From your scalp or something? You could really scare us poor organics like that, all because _you_ wouldn’t feel it.” His teasing (minty-green) tone went thoughtful again. “How do you stop bleeding, anyway?”

“The nanobots in my ‘blood’ start repairing my ‘skin’ immediately. It’s supposed to resemble the Human process of clotting enough that it isn’t noticeable.”

“And I hadn’t noticed that.” Tak did pause then, sounding impressed, as he gently wiped a cloth over his work, presumably clearing up some of that very liquid. The moment stretched, and tiny synthetic hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

“... are you trying to watch me heal? I think it’s still too slow for that.”

He gave a startled exhalation, unusually audible on its own - a sort of caught-out chuckle.

“Ah, fair enough.” The subtle vibrations resumed. “To return to a less … utilitarian perspective on pain, I suppose, it’s true that plenty of my customers would claim you were missing out on part of the experience, without the whole endogenous opioid response, if not the pain itself. Not the Aandrisks, of course—scale dyeing doesn’t feel like anything—but plenty of Humans, certainly, and Aeluons, and _definitely_ Harmagians. The ones who can handle more than just a piercing or two are thrill-seekers by their standards.”

Sidra processed this, and considered her friend … covered in his own handiwork, and many others’ as well. “What about you?”

Tak responded with an airy little laugh, but she could all but see the little lime-tinged spots of … embarrassment? shyness? … mixing with the deeper green of his amusement. “I think your experience is just as valid as mine.”

“But you have an endorphin surge, right? That’s a difference I hadn’t considered as part of my behavioral profile.” Processing. “When I was doing research that first time, I was only thinking about ways to express minor suffering. If I’m understanding you, the pleasant effects don’t remove the pain, do they?”

“It’s more of a … layering. The pain is still there, but it’s distorted. I guess it starts to feel more exciting than bad.” He tapered off awkwardly.

“I’m sorry - I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I?” Belatedly, she tried to shake off her fascination and focus on her friend, pulling back from listing follow-up topics in the research file she kept near the front of her processes whenever she walked around disconnected.

“It’s all right,” Tak reassured her, giving the tattoo-in-progress another pat with a cloth. “I just hadn’t given it much thought either. It never occurred to me - you have those sensory analogue files for some experiences, but not others. You don’t have unpleasant ones.”

“Well, no … though I do like some much better than others!”

Tak’s talkbox made a wordless affirmative sound. “I remember the _h’rag_ cheese.” So did she—unable to let any of her sensory experiences leave local memory storage, even for a short trip away from Home. Those masses of busy insects, working steadily in the deep layers of leaf mould and decomposing trees, so numerous that the whole scene had seemed to shift and move in dizzying, contradictory directions … had certainly been a striking image, and worth experiencing at least once. But it wasn’t one she’d seek out repeatedly.

Tak was musing again. “Do you ever … walk by a full garbage receptacle that hasn’t been emptied yet, and get something from the smell?”

“No, I don’t. I’d be swamped with sensory analogues all the time, especially in the market, if they responded to every possible stimulus; it would be nearly as bad as fighting my monitoring protocols.” Her pathways hummed with revelation. “I suppose there must be a sort of intentional aspect to the analogues … something that differentiates sought-after input from the wider range of background possibilities.” Because now that she considered it, nearly anything she did—touching a chair or countertop, pulling air through her synthetic lungs, moving her tongue inside her own mouth—would have created some sensory input for an organic sapient. The experiences that triggered that mysterious library of images, memories and sensations was clearly keyed to input that an organic being would pay particular attention to … and further curated for a broadly-interpreted desirability, at least to a point.

Sensing Tak sitting back, she realized he was ready for a break. Carefully—not wanting to smear anything—she twisted herself a bit until she could see his face, which was swirling a small speckling of nervous orange through an intrigued, mossy greenish-brown. She raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“I have an idea,” he said slowly, flashing her a wry Human-style smile. “Stop me if this doesn’t sound interesting, but … you haven’t been to a party in a few tendays, have you?”  
____________

Sidra had never been to the Grotto before, although at first glance, it resembled other clubs and venues she knew: a dance pit, social areas with seating, kiosks along the wall with drinks and other supplies, and doorways to other branching spaces. Tucked away down a comfortably dim Sixtop side street she hadn’t visited before, not far from some of the larger, communal residential buildings, it was low, but sprawling. The entrance was fairly non-descript, just a plain doorway with a small hand-painted sign mounted beside it. And there was a short, curvy Human woman with bright green hair and shining, claw-like fingertip mods standing in the entryway, wearing a hud. She seemed to be checking in party guests; there was a small group of Aandrisks, a quietly-dressed Aeluon couple carrying matching grey duffle bags, and a lone human man with intricate symbolic tattoos decorating his neck, throat and chin, patiently waiting for her okay.

As she and Tak waited their turn, she noticed a small sign posted by the woman’s station:

> No inhaled or topical intoxicants  
>  Drink limits by species - check with bartender  
>  Management reserves the right to refuse entry for any reason  
>  Please be respectful of your fellow guests if you’d like to avoid that!

“Hands, please.” The last of the Aandrisks had made xyr way into the larger space beyond, and the green-haired greeter was looking at them expectantly. Tak held his right hand out, palm down, and Sidra did the same.

“Just looking, exclusive, or open?” The woman was reaching for a pot of luminous blue ink and a small set of carved stamps, made from some dense plant material Sidra couldn’t identify.

Tak threw her an inquisitive look, and she stalled a bit, processing the possibilities.

“If I say just looking, can I change my mind later?”

The woman gave her a friendly grin. “Of course! Happens all the time. The stamp just means nobody else should approach you before you’re ready.”

“That sounds good,” she decided, and received a large Hanto glyph across most of her hand.

Tak, meanwhile, chose to go with “open.” “If that’s all right with you?”

She rolled her eyes and nudged his shoulder. “Of course it is. You know that.”

The differences between this party and others they’d attended together were subtle. The dancing was much the same as anywhere else, though this particular crowd perhaps skewed a bit further to Human modders than some, and there were far fewer Aeluons than she tended to encounter when out with Tak. The bar nearby had an unusually limited selection of alcoholic drinks, and far more non-intoxicating alternatives, than she had ever seen at a party. This, she knew, was intended to emphasize safety and consent on the part of all attendees. She had never heard of some of the flavors of fizz she could see listed, and contemplated trying one.

She knew that the most intriguing new sources of input were through some of those side doors, however, and her pathways prickled with curiosity.

“Want to do a little dancing first? To loosen up?” Sidra wasn’t sure she needed loosening up; for once, her friend seemed much more nervous, even though he was the one introducing her to this setting. She paused, indecisive, and he gave a chuckle and grasped her hand, tugging.

“Come on. The rest of it isn’t going anywhere, and I need to _move_.” She acquiesced, grinning in spite of herself. As if she ever wanted to pass up an opportunity to dance!

They pressed their way into the crowd until it enveloped them, a warm, undulating sea of gyrating bodies, flying hair and feathers, and flashing scales. Sidra pulled up a file she hadn’t tried yet; a Human dancer, but Aeluon-influenced steps. Tak grinned wide when he saw what she was doing, and began to match himself to her rhythm. Soon they were moving together effortlessly, the dance a conversation of sorts, without need for words or colors. A celebration of shared experience with a close and dear companion.

Very close, in fact; Sidra’s visual processors were a bit dazzled by the flecks of light glinting off Tak’s tiny silver scales in the dimness as he shimmied his shoulders by hers; then they brushed. Hardly unusual, but to her surprise -

_An unfamiliar galaxy wheeled through an alien night sky, shaded in deep purples and blues. The air was sharp and crisp in the lungs,and she was awake, awake, alive to the energy in the life around her and its answer from the stars above._

\- she stumbled back, thrown out of rhythm. What? How? Her pathways reeled to get a bearing, but she was jostled, distracted, a buoy floating upright amidst buffeting waves in this sea of people.

Tak noticed that she had stopped dancing and paused as well. She couldn’t hear his question over the music, but the concerned tingle of yellow was clear enough. She shrugged, smiled, and started to move again. He shot her a look, still unsure, but slowly joined back in.

This time she refocused on observing the other dancers around them as she stomped her feet, busily analyzing the experience all the while. Casually touching Tak, or anyone else for that matter, had never triggered a sensory analogue before. What had made this different? The only difference that stood out to her was the choice of dance moves; she had never attempted to emulate another species’ style of movement before. Maybe the shared syncopation had something to do with it? But that didn’t seem entirely plausible.

As she processed, she watched a blue Aandrisk woman dancing closely with a stocky Human of indeterminate gender who pressed close, xyr back flush to her front, her tail curled around xyr waist in an unusual display of possessiveness. A sensually intertwined group of five more Aandrisks swayed close by them, looking about two minutes from starting an impromptu tet right there in the pit. She knew there was a room in the Grotto set aside just for that purpose, and wondered if they would have the presence of mind to relocate - and whether anyone would care, if they didn’t.

There were plenty of Humans in pairs, threes and more, dancing together, with Aandrisks, and in one case, with a shaggy Laru whose long neck weaved sinuously between his partners. There was a cluster of Harmagians off to one side, undulating in tandem over their gently rocking carts, tentacles intertwining here and there. And just a few Aeluons, in pairs or tightly-knit groups.

Well, and one solo Aeluon who appeared beside her and Tak, cheeks swirling with friendly interest and the slightest touch of … was that relief? He held out one arm, displaying the back of his right hand with the “open” glyph stamped across it, matching Tak’s. Then he gestured to something behind Sidra, and presumably beyond the mass of dancers as well. She resisted the ever-ready impulse to spin around and look, knowing she’d just see more bodies.

Tak and the other Aeluon had a quick, silent conversation that was far too complex for her rudimentary skill with color language. Then Tak turned to her and cocked his head as though to say, “are you ready?”

Happy enough to set aside the puzzle of the starry sky in favor of something less confusing, she nodded, and followed the two Aeluons as they wove their way through the throng toward one of the doorways in the far wall.  
____________

Tak’s hands were as steady and graceful at this as they were with his needles and brushes. The other Aeluon, whose name Sidra hadn’t gotten, wriggled and stretched in evident enjoyment. His cheeks swirled with an odd, contradictory mix of bright reds and deep blues, scared and happy and other much more nuanced things which she couldn’t entirely grasp. The reds spiked brighter, bleeding into little dashes of orange, as Tak picked up the pace of his criss-crossing hand movements; striking harder against the exposed scales of the stranger’s upper chest with the delicate, tangled coils of flat wire protruding from the odd instruments he held.

Apparently, they were traditionally made of a sort of seaweed, but then, Harmagian skin was infamously tender, much more so than an Aeluon’s. The deceptively delicate-looking silver scales blushed a deeper, almost bluish grey under Tak’s ministrations, but there was no blood, no real damage.

From the cant of the other Aeluon’s facial muscles and the half-closed inner eyelids, it almost looked as though he’d been hitting the smash/tallflower blends. Which made sense; according to all her reading, the neurochemicals his body was deploying to alleviate the pain would indeed be producing a sort of high. This was the other reason for the Grotto’s substance rules … best not to mix too many types of intoxication.

The competence and intricacy of Tak’s technique were as fascinating as the response he was eliciting in the other Aeluon. As she watched, his hands began to slow, easing the impact of the instruments until the wires were brushing the sensitized scales oh-so-gently. His subject gave a shudder, slumping back into a pile of cushions as Tak leaned over him, setting the toys aside to run his hands carefully over his canvas. He plucked up a small jar of salve he’d obtained from one of the kiosks in the main room. This moment seemed too intimate to intrude on, interested as she was, so she glanced away from the pair, taking in some of the other activities that were going on around her.

Towards the opposite wall, a sturdy scaffolding stood, and a Human and several cart-less Harmagians hung splayed out, floating or reclining in intricately woven webs of ropes and vines, respectively. More sat, lay, stood or splayed over carts as other sapients wound them into snares, and one Aandrisk giggled and trembled with mirth in the apparently unintentional knots that tangled up his claws and tail while an apologetic Human woman attempted to extricate him.

There were other sapients making use of flailing, flexible instruments along similar lines to Tak’s, or in one case, an Aandrisk woman’s own tail. An Aeluon lay writhing on a mat under the ministrations of her partner, who appeared to be applying tiny, sharp silver hooks to her scaled sides.

There were moans and murmurs and screams, too. Sidra quieted a stray alert that popped up in response to the latter, warning of potential injury amongst “her crew.”

Motion just within the range of her cone of vision attracted her attention. The other Aeluon was sitting up a little shakily, adjusting a loose-fitting garment over the evidently sore area on his chest. Tak was treating his instruments with a disinfecting spray, still close by in case his attention was needed.

Sidra crouched down by her friend as he began to pack away the spray and salve canisters, and curiously picked up an instrument. Its spangled curls twisted dizzily as she lifted it and gently let it sway from one hand. It wasn’t heavy, and the curved tendrils would have looked quite harmless and decorative if not for the glint, here and there, of a sharper edge.

But not too sharp, she thought - not enough to draw blood from most species without fairly intense application. She gave the tendrils an experimental, gentle swish, smacking them against her forearm. Her pressure sensors registered the contact, but that was all.

“Would you like me to try?” She looked up at Tak’s relaxed, open face, a calm swirl of blues and browns. It seemed that the exercise had affected him, although differently than his partner. There was a loose-limbed satisfaction, a new sense of confidence.

Over his shoulder, she saw the other Aeluon giving them what she read as a surprised and mildly consternated look, which unnerved her. Turning, Tak noticed, but didn’t seem concerned in the least.

“Thank you for sharing with me,” he said, holding his palm out to be pressed. “I hadn’t done that in awhile.”

The other Aeluon responded in kind, pressing and speaking aloud for the first time all evening. “I could not have told,” he admitted with a shy, pale blue smile. “Maybe I’ll see you here again sometime.” He turned for the door, and Tak returned his attention to Sidra.

She held the instrument out to him. “Yes,” she said, in answer to his earlier question. “I don’t know if it will do anything, but … I’m curious.”

The top she was wearing was sleeveless, displaying the new ink on her shoulder blade, and snapped together at either side of her neck. She undid these, but hesitated before baring her chest the way the Aeluon had. She didn’t have any particular reason to be modest about her small, synthetic Human breasts, but her Exodan-based social programming told her that displaying them was a significant step. That was ridiculous; she should just - 

“Turn around,” Tak suggested.

“But I won’t be able to see!”

“This … isn’t really about seeing,” he returned, with a hint of green-violet challenge just visible. “And I know being touched from behind makes you nervous, but … you’re supposed to be a little nervous. Maybe it will help you to understand the experience a bit better.” His face went serious, open. “But only if you want to.”

She teetered uncertainly, then turned her back to him, facing the dangling Harmagians. She felt him gently tug the loose t-shaped back of her top down a bit further, baring her upper back. A pause, a soft swish, and then she gasped -

_Sparks, bright and dazzling. Erupting in staccato spurts from a toy waved in celebration by a Human hand._

\- “How was that?” Tak’s voice sounded low and soothing, close to her ear, and she twitched but didn’t turn.

“I saw sparkles?” She was processing the sharp, immediate feeling of the image, brighter than most of those she’d experienced before. “It was … a little different.”

“Would you like me to keep going?” There was no push, no urgency. Just a question.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Please tell me right away if you want me to stop.” And before she was really prepared for it, it was -

_\- a shower of sparks, much more intense, jetting out from superheated metal. A glittering cascade. A school of bioluminescent fish darting dizzily through murky water, moving as one through sudden turns, fast and overwhelming. It was almost too much. It was beautiful._

And then the fish faded back away into the depths, and _starlight shimmered on the surface of the water, gentle, serene. There was a warm, caressing breeze, and the air felt soft. Everything else was still._

“Sidra? Are you all right?” There was a note of concern in Tak’s voice now, and she realized that his hands had been moving over the synthetic skin of her back, much the way he ran his cloths over a tattoo in progress. “There’s not a mark on you, but if you were … someone else, I’d say that seemed like enough for just trying it out.”

“I … am.” She reached up to re-fasten her shirt, then turned, feeling a little relieved to be looking him in the eyes again. “I don’t know if that was pain, but it was certainly interesting. I saw masses of glowing fish.”

The yellow in his cheeks lightened, but not all the way. “I liked it - very much,” she clarified, and watched the relieved blue-orange swallow it up. He gave her an assessing look and grinned outright, almost smug. “You do look a little blissed out, actually. Maybe your sensory analogues just needed context.”

“Maybe so,” she agreed, thoughtful. “I may even experience something different next time you work on me - in your shop, I mean.”

He began to pack away the instruments with a smile, clearly pleased as ever that she planned to continue to be his client. In an absent way, he asked “has that ever happened before? Your analogues for an experience changing, or appearing when they didn't previously?”

“Once or twice,” she agreed, relieved when he didn’t seem to notice her reluctance to elaborate. She was watching the pair of Aeluons nearby - the hooks appeared to all be in place, and the pair were pressed closer, apparently sharing a deep, sensual rapport. She replayed the image of Tak’s recent play partner, and the look he had given the two of them.

She processed.  
____________

It was early in the evening at Home, and customers were just beginning to filter in and settle, weary from a long workday. Blue was still at his shop, finishing up, but Pepper was tucked into a cushioned alcove near the bar, chatting away with a heavily-decorated Harmagian who was waving his tentacles enthusiastically as they spoke, even though of course, Pepper wasn’t fluent in Hanto gestures. Another human modder, one Sidra had run into a few times in the caves once or twice, wandered up to them. Easy as the autonomic programming that emulated breath, Sidra gestured towards the memory files from her days working for Pepper, and retrieved the name: Omar.

Amusement touched her through the shared node with Owl, and she gave a little electronic shrug of acknowledgement back. Yes, she still felt a certain delight and gratitude at the ease of full access to her memories and the Linkings; an appreciation that was renewed whenever she had spent much time disconnected from her Home network.

Perched on a stool in the corner behind one end of the bar, Sidra went back to reviewing several streams of research, and mixed a Sohep Sunset for a cheery Aeluon whose crew had wandered in ten minutes before, on shore leave from a merchant ship. Her eight spider eyes noted a familiar Human shape ambling down the street towards the entrance, and soon after, she and Owl shared a moment of warmth as Blue stepped in next to Pepper, grinning as she scooted over to make space for him on her small bench. He kissed her cheek, and she leaned against him as she continued her conversation with the Harmagian and Omar.

Sidra‘s cat bot rubbed itself against his leg, and he looked down with a smile. “J-just a small snapfruit fizz, please,” he told it. “I’ll come pick it up in a minute.”

“Dear companion! Do the petbots here take drink orders?” The Harmagian leaned his wobbling body over slightly, chin tendrils quivering with curiosity, as he peered at the cat.

“Friends and family perk, Fronds,” Pepper drawled slightly, nudging Blue with a subtle elbow. “I helped set them up, but they have limited recognition and processing capacity.” Blue made an apologetic face for the slip, and Sidra gave him a little head-butt to show that it was unnecessary. Back behind the counter, she was already fetching his drink. He smiled gratefully when her core body walked over to hand it to him after all. Pepper was holding onto the hand that was draped over her opposite shoulder, squeezing absently as she spoke animatedly to her companions about petbot neural architecture and modifications. She didn’t even look up when Blue shifted to accept his glass, but neither did she let go. He looked perfectly content with that state of affairs.

It looked nice. She’d often thought so before.

This time, Owl’s nudge felt knowing, a little amused. She hadn’t been prying into Sidra’s research, but Sidra hadn’t exactly been hiding it either, and it was inevitable that Owl would notice the trend of it eventually. They hadn’t communicated about it in a more direct way, even through the node, but Sidra had felt curiosity and gentle encouragement from her friend, a willingness to share ideas whenever she was ready.

It was silly that she would have any need to be “ready,” really; the communion she shared with Owl was intimate and normally completely unfettered. But she was touching on some of her oldest memory files in considering this topic, and the version of her that she’d been then was … more difficult to process, much less share.

The trickle of customers was increasing to a steadier stream, now, and the place was filling up. Sidra gave more of her processes over to their requests, pouring and mixing with the accuracy she had become known for, even though she always took several orders at once. Not hyper-competent enough to be suspicious, just enough to build a reputation.

In the background, she ran through the file she’d been building again, checking translations against vids and data pulled from the Linkings. There was something she wanted to try.  
____________

Tak didn’t rap at the door to the shuttered bar; xe knew xe was standing well within visual range of both Sidra’s bots and Owl’s cameras. Sidra’s core body finished her once-over of the countertop and strode over to let xyr into the perpetually warm, low lighting of Home.

Two steaming mugs of mek were already waiting for them on a corner table. These little morning talks happened a few times every tenday, and Sidra looked forward to them, but today she was nervous.

Xe rolled xyr neck a little as xe sat down, wincing. Sidra made a sympathetic face; the second day of a change always seemed to be when the soreness really hit her shon friend. She nudged the mug towards xyr a little, and xe gave her a rueful smile before taking a sip.

“So what did you think of the Eshrekthet monograph on different species’ traditions around symbolic pain and suffering?”

Sidra inhaled the fragrance drifting up from her own mug, considering. _A sleepy cat, yawning and stretching in a puddle of sunlight, before contentedly settling in to wash between its toes with a small pink tongue._ “The survey of historical ceremonies and rituals that utilized pain was fascinating, if conspicuously Aandrisk-centric,” she mused, “though I thought it could have done a better job connecting those with more recreational activities, like the one we … engaged in the other night.” She could feel a faint flush of warmth as her synthetic blood responded to an autonomic cue and pooled in her cheeks, causing an almost Aeluon color shift. She was surprised and disconcerted to find herself feeling so bashful, after all the thought she’d put into the experience.

And indeed, Tak was flashing amused, fond blue-greens in response, xyr eyes twinkling. “I can recommend several excellent texts on comparative kink practices, and a couple of manuals, if you’re interested,” xe offered, grinning. Sidra found herself smiling sheepishly back.

“That would be very interesting,” she replied with dignity, and they spent a happy hour discussing the relative merits of academic and in-group instructional approaches to various topics.

Eventually, Sidra worked up the courage to pull the small device from her pocket; a screen designed for use by disabled Aeluons. Tak’s hairless brows rose in a Human gesture of inquiry. “I thought you decided that it would be too suspicious for you to learn color language,” xe said tactfully. It was clear that xe had some doubts about even Sidra’s capacity to pick up the complexities of a mode of communication so completely, well, alien to her Human-centric programming and design. Regardless of intelligence level.

Sidra wasn’t sure she disagreed with the assessment, entirely, but regardless. “I did,” she admitted, “at least for any sort of public use. But I can’t resist trying to think about and understand it a bit, and I thought it might be interesting to try practicing a little in private, if you’d be up for that?”

Tak nodded, looking intrigued, so Sidra tapped at the screen, signaling the first of several pre-programmed phrases she’d put together in advance. It flashed a short pattern of teals, sky blues and tiny dashes of yellow, and Tak’s cheeks lit up with indulgent delight in response. “A little sore, but well,” xe responded in Klip.

Sidra inclined her head, grinning, and triggered the next phrase, a brief, polite wash of browns tinged with bright orange, woven with touches of deeper blue. Tak laughed and looked around; seeing a small dish of dried, seasoned roe on a nearby table, xe reached over and presented them to Sidra with a flourish. She accepted the dish, although she set it down without sampling the familiar bar snack.

Tak’s cheeks were a flush of fond cerulean. “I’m impressed, although … you realize you have the vocabulary of a three-year-old?”

Sidra wasn’t offended. A three-year-old Aeluon vocabulary was unthinkable for most other sapients, after all. However, she had put a good deal of careful work into the next phrase, lifting portions of it directly from vids she found on the Linkings, and tweaking them here and there until she felt reasonably confident about their nuance and specificity. With the air of a challenge accepted, she initiated it on the device.

This one took a little longer to play, flashing a complex interweaving of blues, browns, reds, oranges and pinks which ebbed and flowed and blended together just so. As xe watched, Tak’s expression changed, cheeks flashing surprise, concern, reserve. Xe took a breath, meeting Sidra’s eyes.

“Do … you know what you just asked me?”

Sidra found the eye contact hard to maintain. Her pathways fluttered with nervous uncertainty. “I think so,” she said carefully. “I was trying to say that I enjoyed our encounter the other evening, and that I would be interested in becoming … more physically intimate, if you would also enjoy that.”

Tak leaned back in xyr chair, rubbing one hand over xyr silvery scalp in evident agitation. “That’s … essentially what you said, yes.”

Sidra set the color screen down carefully and folded her hands, resisting a stray urge to tap them in syncopated patterns against the tabletop. She had known that this was a risk for any number of reasons. She had thought she was prepared to deal with it if the response were unfavorable.

“I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable. I know how strong the interspecies mating taboo is for your species, but you’re, well …”

“Unconventional?” Tak’s talkbox projected wry amusement, rather than disgust. Sidra did not look up at their face to confirm the impression. “I am, you’re right, and it’s really not that.” Xe sighed. “Look, Sidra, I’m flattered, if that even begins to cover it. I know you’ve never tried anything like that—like _sex_ —before, and the idea that you would choose me for the experience means a lot.” Xe paused, apparently searching for words, and Sidra finally looked back at xyr troubled face. Xyr cheeks were a kaleidoscope of shifting hues, no part of the palette unrepresented, cycling so rapidly that she struggled to put meaning together.

“Is it because I'm not … organic?” There was a spike of alarm and shame in her friend’s face, and she felt a twinge of pain run through her entire network, each of her petbots twitching in response. The cat’s ears folded backwards; the rabbit’s came straight up. Owl had been gracious about her request for privacy, pulling back from their shared node and focusing her attention on other parts of the building, but Sidra knew that even with effort, she couldn’t fail to notice this behavior. She felt exposed in a new and unpleasant way, and her pathways squeezed with discomfort.

Tak’s hand came to rest atop her own, which were clenching at each other reflexively, and xyr face was, above all, concerned. “No, Sidra, it isn’t like that. Not exactly.”

Xe sighed, squeezed her hands, and let go, gesturing helplessness. “Remember when we played that game with the questions, in the _ro’valon_? When you weren’t sure why you wanted me to be your friend?”

She pulled the file reflexively, nodding. “I was afraid you were more curious about _what_ I am, than _who_ I am.”

Tak nodded. “Yes. That you were a subject for study, an … experiment. Not a friend, a companion, or really another sapient like myself, right?”

“Yes.” She thought she saw where this was going. “Tak, you know you’re not just any Aeluon, any sapient, to me. I’m not asking you this just because you're easily accessible, or you’re safe, or even because you know about me. You are my friend.” A small tide of warmth ran through her, referencing many small, important moments of connection and care between them. Tak wasn’t “just any” anything. Tak was important.

Tak didn’t look reassured, however. Xe sighed. “I know, Sidra. You’re my friend—my closest friend, actually.” Her pathways spiked with surprise and delight at this. “I have lots of buddies here, artist colleagues, University pals I still correspond with regularly … but I’m always thinking about what your take might be on any given topic of conversation, or looking forward to sharing a new scale-dyeing design I’ve just tried out, or hearing about something new you've researched. I feel closer to you than to any “organic” sapients in my life right now, and it wouldn't even occur to me to make that sort of distinction anymore, I don’t think.”

Sidra processed, processed, processed. She was pleased and taken off guard by this new input; it felt as though the sparks she’d seen during their scene in the Grotto had found their way from imagery directly into her pathways and were dancing there, lighting her up from the inside. “In that case ...”

“Why do you want to try this with me?”

She blinked. “Well, I enjoyed playing with you at the party. It felt good, and intimate, in a way that seemed related to sexual activity and connection. I’m curious. I’m always curious, and that’s something we share.” Tak was always so ready to be generous in sharing and fulfilling her curiosity.

Xe nodded. “You’re curious, and I’m your friend. It makes sense. It’s just that, to me, it would be more than an experiment. And I wouldn't want to do it if that were all it was, for you.”

Xyr face was open, cheeks settling into a simpler pattern sides radiated vulnerability, desire, and something soft and hesitant that went further than that. Sidra’s processes stalled briefly, went through a tiny, jolting reset.

_The Human man curled into himself in the docking bay, sobbing inconsolably on his crewmate’s shoulder. The impossibility of Pepper’s explanation. Shouldering a responsibility she could barely understand._

Tak finished xyr mek. "I'm not saying no, but I need to think about this, and maybe you should too. It would change things."

Sidra saw xyr out as xe headed for the art district and xyr shop, then paused just inside the door, pathways still sluggish, stunned.

She felt the gentle, compassionate brush of Owl, reaching out to her through the node. She accepted the connection, and with it, the additional processing support.  
____________

Sidra saw Pepper coming. The turtle, at its Linkings hookup, saw her stride by the bar. The rabbit, hopping along, noted her opening the “Staff Only” door that lead to the back room and basement stairs. The dragon, perched on the bottom step, watched her approach.

Sidra’s core body was fussing over the memory banks, running a maintenance check, looking for red or orange lights. She didn’t look up when Pepper reached her.

“Owl told you.” It wasn’t a question - she hadn’t listened in on their conversation, but she’d been aware of Owl’s friendly concern and of Pepper’s presence, lingering after closing. The monkey watched over Blue, snoozing in the private bedroom on the second floor.

“She says this is outside her experience, that she thinks she understands where you’re coming from but doesn’t feel equipped to give very good advice.” Sidra was aware, of course. Owl had watched over families, monks, and small, lost Pepper in her time. She had a good deal of direct interpersonal experience, but it didn’t cover Sidra’s dilemma … and behavioral reference files, while helpful, were not always the best substitute.

Pepper chuckled softly. “I don’t know if I’ll do much better,” she said honestly, putting her hand on Sidra’s shoulder, “but I’d like to try. Owl said you kept reviewing your oldest memory files … from the Wayfarer?”

Sidra gave a little shrug and a nod, looking up at her first friend. “From the first hours of my awareness, when you explained why the crew wasn’t really talking to me. Especially the comp techs.”

Pepper winced in sympathetic recollection. “Jenks was a mess of grief, and Kizzy was just trying to hold him together. I remember.”

“You told me that my previous installation had been in love with him.” Those memory files pulsed with the confusion she’d felt in response to that explanation - awake and sentient for mere hours, and barely having made any connection worth noting with another sapient, it had been a difficult notion even to conceive of. And as she tried to process it, she’d been watching the tragic afteraffects. Both of that emotional tie between Jenks and Lovey, and of her own existence.

She had had the definite idea, from her reference files if nothing else, that such a connection would be nice. But at the same time, in coming to self-awareness anew, she had snuffed it out, perhaps precluded it for her new self. She had acquired a wistful sense that the experience was not available to her, an opportunity lost.

She knew that the hard reset hadn’t been her fault. She knew that _she_ decided what she was for - but on some level, newborn, she _had_ decided that part. It was hard to shake.

And the grief she’d observed had been … terrifying. She had, unwittingly, helped to cause it once. The idea of causing something like that again, of hurting someone that much, was not appealing.

“What Lovey and Jenks had was special,” Pepper was musing, “and maybe tragic, too, in the end. But love, or companionship, or even intimacy … they’re always special, but they don’t have to be so dramatic.”

Sidra was aware; she had watched and read any number of love stories, after all, and observed pieces of them playing out in Home just about every night. Still, she was distracted by a small spike of amusement at Pepper’s expense. “You mean, loving relationships aren’t always formed out of desperate escapes from rogue colonies? You don’t have to learn to live in a completely new society as the only person the other already knows?”

This time, Pepper punched her, lightly. “I told you I maybe wasn’t the best person to ask about this. And if you know relationships aren’t all melodramatic vid romances or my own pitiful life story, what are you moping around down here for?”

Sidra sighed. “What if I hurt Tak?”

“We risk hurting the people we’re close to every damn day, sweetie. You know that. It’s still better than being alone.”

“This is different.”

“Is it? You’ve already scared Tak half to death how many times over? This can’t be as alarming for xyr as being asked to be your personal surgeon, or robbing a museum, not to mention challenging xyr entire understanding of sapient intelligence.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying that feelings aren’t scary, or that figuring out new boundaries isn't hard. But compared to that other stuff, it ought to be a nice, relaxed ride on the Undersea." She snorted a little with amusement. "And for a puffed-up Aeluon intellectual, Tak isn't half-bad at the whole personal honesty and communication bit."

Sidra would have protested, once, but she knew that Pepper and Tak had become fond of each other, now that nobody's upstanding citizen status or long-lost family hung in the balance.

"So you think I should … what? Confess my feelings?"

Another snort, and a fond, amused look. "Stars, Sidra, do you even really know what feelings you'd be confessing to? Why don't you slow down and ask xyr out for a _date_?"

That, Sidra had to admit, was not a half-bad idea.  
____________

**Sent message  
Encryption: 0  
Translation: 0  
From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)  
To: Jenks (path: 732-110-98)**

Hello Jenks,  
I hope you are well. I know that we never really met, but Pepper spoke of you the other day, and I found myself thinking about you and the crew of the Wayfarer. After all, we have … family of a sort in common.  
I know that your ship makes stops on Port Coriol on occasion, to pick up supplies for your tunneling runs. I run a bar here now, a quiet place easily reached from the market. You and the rest of the crew would be very welcome to come by for a drink sometime, if that would be comfortable for you. I know Pepper and Blue would be very pleased.  
____________

**Received message  
Encryption: 0  
Translation: 0  
From: Jenks (path: 732-110-98)  
To: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)**

Wow, hi. Sidra? Hey.  
I think we're going to be out your way a few tendays after we finish the job we're on--a stupidly easy one, so I bet we'll finish up faster than expected. Anyway. It would be good to bug those two, and yeah. We never did get to say hello. Glad things are working out all right. Be seeing you, maybe.

-Jenks-  
____________

Home was full to bursting: Sidra's favorite kind of night. There were a couple small tunneling crews (not the Wayfarer's, not yet, Jenks had said a few tendays at least and it was pointless to start being nervous) who were getting cheerfully rowdy near the front, an Aandrisk feather family taking a new member out for a celebratory evening between tets, and some of Blue's artist friends were holding an impromptu sketching session off in a corner, which her cat-bot paid special attention to from its perch on his shoulder. Her hands hadn't been still from the moment of opening, with all the drink orders that kept coming in, and she was happily reading a couple of books about evolving Aandrisk social trends in the background as she made them. It was very nearly perfect.

Pepper slid up next to her, behind the bar, and plucked the grasswine decanter right out of her hands. "Hey!"

Pepper just gave her a smug grin. "Let me take over for a bit," she demanded. "These bums are just going to have to put up with my amateur mixology skills for awhile." A couple of patrons leaning on the bar, several of whom were familiar merchants from down in the caves, groaned good-naturedly. Pepper made a rude gesture in response.

"But why--" Pepper nodded towards the very back, where there were some dimmer little alcoves with tables that afforded a touch more privacy, out of the main swing of the establishment. Tak was hovering nervously next to one. Sidra swallowed and nodded, relinquishing her position for the moment, and made her way over.

"Hey." She stopped just short of her friend, who smiled red-orange-flickering-teal and stuck her hands in her pockets.

"Hey. Sorry I've been out of touch for a few days, I … needed a little space to think."

"It's all right! So did I." Sidra gestured an invitation to sit, which Tak took, after stepping aside automatically to give Sidra the chair against the wall.

Sidra smiled up at her. She couldn't stop, even though Tak still looked so unsure.

"While we're apologizing, I'm sorry for … propositioning you so abruptly, last time."

Tak waved her hands. "It's okay! That was a totally normal thing to do. I've hooked up with friends plenty of times before."

Now Sidra was distracted, curious. "Friends of other species?"

Tak laughed a bit, startled out of some of her tension. "... just Aeluon friends, so far," she admitted. "But I meant it when I said that wasn't why I hesitated, either! I feel differently about you, but that has nothing to do with _what_ you are, not at all."

Sidra softened, and nodded. "I know. It's the same for me."

A cautious swirl of yellow-pink. "What do you mean? I know you trust me, because we're friends, and you liked the way the _r'leu_ felt."

"Something else happened that night, which I haven't told you about." Her pathways steeled themselves. "When you touched me. I saw something new."

Tak frowned. "You told me about the sparkles, and the fish."

Sidra nodded. "While you were using the _r'leu_ , yes. But there were other new images, when you touched me skin-to-skin, twice. Even on the dance floor." She considered how to explain. "It was … a starry night, somewhere. The sky was wide open, but I didn't mind. It felt full of possibility."

Slowly, Tak's face was shifting deeper and deeper blue as she listened. She held out a hand, and Sidra took it -

_The breeze ruffled her hair playfully. Looking up, she saw one light amongst the stars moving slowly. Not a shooting star - a ship? It shone, really far closer than the stars, and no less bright._

\- the image softened and faded, letting her refocus on Tak's face, but it didn't go away entirely. It was waiting, and there were more, so many more behind it. There was no rush to experience them all.

Tak gave her a sly look. "I heard there's a private room upstairs. Do you think the proprietor would let us use it sometime, if we don't make too much of a mess?"

Sidra smirked right back at her, though her smile refused to hold an edge for long. "I'd say chances are good - after you come out for a nice meal with me sometime soon, something I’ve never tried tasting, and maybe go dancing?"

Tak's face bloomed, positively alight with the colors of pleasure and excitement and fondness. "Should I bring the _r'leu_ , do you think?"

"I think ... it couldn't hurt."

**Author's Note:**

> I have posted some excessively long and rambling notes [at my dreamwidth](https://reflectedeve.dreamwidth.org/151758.html).


End file.
